I've spent almost my entire career as a journalist covering tech in and around Silicon Valley, meeting entrepreneurs, executives and engineers, watching companies rise and fall (or in the case of Apple, rise, fall and rise again) and attending confabs and conferences. Before joining Forbes in February 2012, I had a very brief stint in corporate communications at HP (on purpose) and worked for more than six years on the tech team at Bloomberg News, where I dived into the financial side of tech. Before that, I was Silicon Valley bureau chief for Interactive Week, a contributor to Wired and Upside, and a reporter and news editor for MacWeek. The first computer game I ever played was Zork, my collection of now-vintage tech T-shirts includes a tie-dye BMUG classic and a HyperCard shirt featuring a dog and fire hydrant. When I can work at home, I settle into the black Herman Miller Aeron chair that I picked up when NeXT closed its doors. You can email me at cguglielmo@forbes.com.

We know a lot about Steve Jobs, thanks to his willingness in the last years of his life to share stories with his biographer about what drove him to co-found Apple Inc. and reinvent the PC, music players, phones and tablets.

But there are plenty of “Steve” stories that you haven’t heard around, and a year after Jobs’ death on Oct. 5 at the age of 56, a few friends and colleagues shared their memories of the technology industry’s most notable luminary.

Hide The Porsches

Software engineer Randy Adams initially turned down Steve Jobs’ offer to work at NeXT, the computer company started by Jobs after his ouster from Apple. It was 1985. Adams wasn’t ready to go back to work after selling his pioneering desktop software publishing company. Within a few days Jobs was on Adams’ answering machine. “You’re blowing it, Randy. This is the opportunity of a lifetime, and you’re blowing it.” Adams reconsidered.

Adams, using some of the cash he’d earned from the sale of his company, bought a Porsche 911 at the same time Jobs did. To avoid car-door dings, they parked near each other–taking up three parking spaces between them. One day Jobs rushed over to Adams’ cubicle and told him they had to move the cars.

“I said, ‘Why?,’ and he said, ‘Randy, we have to hide the Porsches. Ross Perot is coming by and thinking of investing in the company, and we don’t want him to think we have a lot of money.’” They moved the cars around to the back of NeXT’s offices in Palo Alto, Calif. and Perot invested $20 million in the company in 1987 and took a seat on the board.

Adams also recalls the time Bill Gates showed up at NeXT for a meeting. It was the fall of 1986. The receptionist in the downstairs lobby called Jobs, whose cube was upstairs, to let him know that Gates was in the lobby. “I could see him sitting in his cube, not really busy. But he didn’t get up or call Gates up. In fact, he left him waiting in the lobby for an hour. That speaks to their rivalry.”

NeXT engineers, Adams said, took the opportunity to go downstairs and ply Gates with questions. “We enjoyed it and spent an hour talking to him until Steve finally called him in.”

Adams said he left NeXT after disagreeing with Jobs about the use of the optical drive in the NeXT workstation, which he felt would be too slow. Some time later Jobs convinced Adams to start a software business around NeXT, which he did with a $2 million investment from Sequoia Capital. But as the business was under way, Jobs called Adams again to let him know that NeXT was going to give up its workstation business and focus instead on software.

“He told me that the cost of hardware is coming down and we think it’s a commodity. I said, ‘Then why don’t you sell PCs?’ Jobs told me, ‘I’d rather sell dog s— than PCs.’”

Adams says he has many memories of Jobs from those days at NeXT – how Jobs, a vegan, would pass by engineers enjoying their Subway sandwiches and comment, “Oh, the smell of burnt animal flesh. How delightful.” In 1986, Jobs dressed up as Santa Claus and handed out $100 bills to employees. Adams also said Jobs was constantly telling employees who had screwed up or done something he didn’t like to “fire yourself.” Was Jobs serious? “Well, if you didn’t get a termination notice then you knew he was only kidding.”

A year after Jobs’ death, Adams, who went on after NeXT to help lead development of Adobe Acrobat and PDF and is a co-founder of the FunnyorDie.com site, says the tech industry is still feeling his loss. “His charisma, was like electricity – he was giving off this incredible force. It was inspirational. He lifted you. I used to believe when I was with Steve, you could do anything. You could change the world. When he died, a little bit of that feeling left me. There’s no one like him.”

Scuff Marks in the Mini-Store

In his first public appearance after revealing he had surgery to remove a tumor from his pancreas in 2004, Jobs met with a handful of reporters (including me) at the Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto, Calif. to unveil a new 750-square-foot “mini” store design. Half the size of the typical Apple retail stores of the time, the mini design featured an all-white ceiling, lit from behind; Japanese-made stainless-steel walls, with holes around the top for ventilation that mimicked the design of the PowerMac G5; and a shiny, seamless white floor made with “material used in aircraft hangars,” Jobs said at the time.

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Thanks for the great article. I’m reminded over and over how we all benefitted from his attention to detail, and his unwillingness to accept less than perfection… and how the people surrounding him occasionally paid a dear price due to these same personality traits.

So we customers have had the best of both worlds: 3 decades of phenomenal products and design – without having to personally deal with the intense process that brought most of them into existence.

None of these stories are new to me, with the exception of the Guy story just being his personal experience of what was standard and expected while working for Steve at NeXT. All of these and mountains of more interesting stories could be found if people would bother to contact NeXT employees–something Isaackson did a disservice by providing barely a footnote for NeXT and just a summary about PIXAR.

Without NeXT Apple dies at the end of 1997 by running out of working capital. That story seems to never get told. Nor the ending of the useless sabbatical program where 1/3rd of all staff were ready to take 12 weeks paid vacation all during the iMac development phase.

But these and more are the many fond memories I have of the only boss I have ever admired, respected and loved. He called a spade a spade–a quality I grew up with in those of my own family and what I found so refreshing at NeXT and Apple.

Cut to the chase and don’t be afraid to challenge Steve were two of his most ardent principles. Be different. Think different. Have opinions and think for yourself because ideas matter.

Unfortunately, 99% of all corporations are routine with barely a pulse as being from my own personal work experience.

From Chesapeake Drive to Infinite Loop 1 there are far more interesting stories than the `good ol’ days up to 1984′ and the standard “What does Guy Kawasaki have to say?,” on the matter series of anecdotes.

NeXT was comprised of the finest talent and persons I’ve ever had the honor to work along side. That same talent and passion was enfused at Apple with a lot of hesitation, at first, but Steve won them over because he delivers on his vision.

No other CEO holds a candle to him and his vision. And anyone still lamenting about how thin their skin was in the early days needs to get a life. Talent doesn’t need to be coddled, it needs to be challenged and Steve knew it; the talent knew because they certainly weren’t masochists like so many seem to paint the canvas of history about Steve and his sadist tendencies of control.

This was such a great article. It’s always exciting to gain additional insight into the heart, mind and soul of Steve Jobs. Thanks so much for the article and thanks for encouraging him to make the Apple Store floors scuff-proof all those years ago. :)